Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Monday he will not run for president in 2012.
“I will not be a candidate for president next year,” Barbour, a Republican, said in a statement. “This has been a difficult, personal decision, and I am very grateful to my family for their total support of my going forward, had that been what I decided.”
Barbour, the former chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association, said he would continue serving as governor of Mississippi and work to “elect a new Republican president in 2012.”
Although he is popular among Washington insiders, he has had trouble gaining traction in recent national polls.

(Via Riehl World View and Cubachi.) So we see that popularity with insiders doesn’t count for much, nor did Barbour’s reputation as a brilliant policy guy or a top fundraiser. Barbour’s dropout means that there are now just two Southerners remaining in the 2012 Republican presidential field: former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Georgia businessman Herman Cain.

The constant refrain of those who have resisted Cain’s gathering grassroots momentum is, “Oh, I like Herman, but he can’t really win.” People who say that are paying attention to the wrong things.

Cain has already visited Iowa 15 times in the past year, usually meeting with small groups of conservative activists. (He spoke to 120 members of the Clinton County GOP last Tuesday.) He’s also visiting New Hampshire, South Carolina and other key states. And if you know Herman Cain, you know that people who meet him always like him.

We’re still more than eight months away from the Iowa caucuses. Cain is slowly and steadily accumulating grassroots supporters there and in other early-primary states, and every time one of the other 2012 GOP hopefuls drops out, the answer to the “Herman can’t win” crowd becomes a little more persuasive: Yeah, but he’s still running, isn’t he?

Expectations are so low for Cain — he has so little national name-recognition, and is being written off by all the “smart” pundits like Charles Krauthammer — that if he can just go the distance and do well in Iowa, he’ll become the Cinderella story of the campaign. But the “smart” pundits will keep on saying he can’t win, right up until the moment when they start saying he can’t be beat.

UPDATE: Allahpundit omits mention of Herman Cain among the “southern candidates” for 2012, although in doing so he reminds me: Oh, yeah, Newt Gingrich. Forgot about Newt. But he was actually born in Pennsylvania.